New flowering bushes and shrubs grace Norwood Boulevard and Norwood Elementary School, with new exercise stations expected to be installed in a few months, largely thanks to CSX and its employees who volunteered their time Saturday to do the planting.

Norwood residents and about 75 CSX railroad employees were on hand Oct. 15 for the project. They were able to tackle the landscaping projects right away thanks to prep work done by six young adults with City Year, a national service program from AmeriCorps, said Tom Creger, a Norwood resident who helped coordinate the project.

The City Year workers coordinated the Norwood project and worked as team leaders for the volunteer groups, Creger said. Earlier in the week they pulled up in the neighborhood with a 53-foot-long trailer filled with tools, and set about getting things ready, he said. They tested soil, got plants together and mapped out a plan for Saturday's landscaping work.

About 350 oak leaf hydrangeas and 50 Virginia sweetspires, a type of shrub, were planted along Norwood Boulevard. Both are native to Alabama and are drought resistant, Creger said.

"We'll need to baby them the first year, then they'll be fine on their own," he said.

Another major component of the project was new landscaping in front of Norwood Elementary.

Earlier in the week the City Year crew removed worn out plants and shrubs from the school grounds and prepared the site for new plants. Crape myrtles, azaleas and holly shrubs are now in place and the neighborhood will maintain the landscaping, Creger said.

Organizers had hoped to install new exercise stations along the Norwood Boulevard walking trail. The walking path is on the roadway's median, a signature greenway where exercise stations were installed years ago. Those need replacing, but the new stations couldn't be made in time, Creger said.

CSX is buying the exercise stations and will install them when they arrive, Creger said. That is expected to be in the next month or two.

Also spruced up was the area around the neighborhood's World War II memorial. The monument, made of Alabama marble and inscribed with the names of Norwood servicemen lost in World War II, is at the Norwood Boulevard trolley stop but doesn't garner a lot of attention, Creger said.

Norwood residents said they were a bit surprised their neighborhood was chosen for the project. "We didn't actively seek it," Creger said.

Jane Covington, resident vice president, state government affairs at CSX, said the railroad annually works with City Year on about 20 service projects around the country. When Birmingham was selected as one of the sites for 2011, CSX officials met with Mayor William Bell's office and several community organizations to get ideas.

Norwood "worked best for CSX because of what the neighborhood itself has come to represent -- breaking down barriers, diversity, community -- also aligns well with the pillars of focus for our 'Beyond our Rails' corporate citizenship program, which strives to make the communities we serve a better place to live and work," Covington said.

Health and wellness are among those pillars and the exercise stations fit in nicely with that, Covington said.

Residents said they are pleased with the results and look forward to the project's completion.

"We are blessed in this neighborhood," said Robert Gilmore, president of the Norwood Neighborhood Association. "We're grateful for CSX to come to us."